May 18, 2007

Internet censorship in South Korea and roots of misunderstanding

China is notorious for its “great firewall of China”. Because my job (software engineer) is somewhat related to the networks and the web technologies, I often hear about it (Google and Wikipedia are always fighting against it while Yahoo and AOL are willing to cooperate with China). You can test to see if your site is blocked or not at this site. And guess what? This blog is certainly blocked.

South Korea, for instance, tends to block only information about its neighboring rival, North Korea.

Yes it IS blocked for sure. South Koreans can’t view North Korean websites maintained by Chongryon in Japan. I think this should be stopped right now. You know why? Because if you keep people in a clean room for a long time, they loose immunity. And when they are exposed by the propaganda, they tend to be tricked so easily. I think it is about time for South Koreans to actually see by themselves how absurd and abnormal North Korea really is, aside from pictures of the happy North Korean faces of kids that the unification minister always waving around.

But, it’s not the only kind of websites that tend to be blocked.

The Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea and related agreements have/had been hidden from South Korean people until 2005. They did not know it ever existed. Even today, they[most people] don’t know what’s exactly in there, especially related agreements concerning money. A few years ago, I was surprised when I showed texts of the agreements over the internet to a South Korean, he said the site was unable to open while I had no problem. But, recently when I tried again, it worked OK. I guess the ROK gave up because a whole bunch of Japanese tried to send them the texts. lol

What’s so important about the agreements? It’s about money. It shows Japan payed enormous amount of money to South Korea and gave up all property left in South Korea, and the ROK demands no more compensation. They denied individual compensation from Japan and demanded to pay the full money directly to the ROK government promising they would use it for those who suffered. But ROK used the money for their economy. And this facts, not to mention the ODAs…, have/had been kept secret to South Koreans. That’s why they keep asking compensation, compensation, compensation, gimme money money all the time.

That’s not all. Do you Korean watchers remember a few years ago when many pro-Japan websites (actully daum cafes) had been taken down? They say it’s not good for young souls. Shit.